Former Cardinals scouting director to plead guilty to hacking Astros

But Luhnow, a former technology executive who left St. Louis to become the Astros’ general manager in December 2011, denied bringing proprietary information from the in-house baseball information network he helped set up in St. Louis.

Conviction on each of the five counts carries a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.

“Yes, your honor, I accept responsibility for my mistakes”, Correa said, adding that his actions were “stupid”.

The Astros repeated their denial of Correa’s allegations against them.

According to the press release, Correa admitted that he “masked his identity, his location and the type of device that he used”.

“Unauthorized computer intrusion is not to be taken lightly”, said US Attorney Kenneth Magidson. “They were watching what the Astros were doing”. The hacks allegedly occurred multiple times over the course of a few years and investigators reportedly traced one of the breaches back to a house in Jupiter, Fla., which is where the Cardinals conduct spring training.

After the Houston Chronicle did a story about Ground Control, the Astros reset everyone’s passwords.

In its investigation, the Justice Department uncovered evidence linking Cardinals officials to an unauthorized entry to the Astros’ database in 2014, accessing internal communications about player trades, scouting reports, and team statistics. That probe stemmed from the leak of information about trade discussions and other personnel decisions involving the Astros that were published on Deadspin.com and other websites last summer. Correa used that address to view more scouting information and additional analytics data. Correa got around that by accessing Victim A’s email account, without authorization, and “he found the emails that contained Ground Controls new URL and the newly reset password”.

Astros general counsel Giles Kibbe called it a hard day for everyone in baseball and said all information from the case would be given to the commissioner’s office. He took issue with comments made by Correa when he told the judge he had found Cardinals’ proprietary information in the Astros computer system.